The life and work of St. Paul

202 THE LIFE AND WOBK OF ST. PAUL.
whatever may have been the qualms of conscience which might otherwise
have troubled his desertion of the sacred task, these excuses and arguments
for doing so must have met with a powerful ally in the circumstances which
were evidently before them.
For as Mark gazed on the mighty chain of Taurus, and remembered that
they were now about to penetrate countries of shifting languages, of unsettled
government, of semi -barbarous populations, of strangely mingled worships,
the brigand fastnesses of Pamphylians, Selgonses, Pisidians, Lycaonians,
Isauriaus, Cilicians, Cliti, Homotlanensos, 1 he may not have been sorry to
conceal dislike to the task on which he had entered under the plea of
filial duty. At the time his defection must have been to Paul, even more
thnn to Barnabas, a positive misfortune. Barnabas, though he clung to his
friend and fellow-labourer with entire whole-heartedness, must yet have
missed the genial brightness, the graphic utterance, the quick spirit of
observation with which his cousin relieved the sombre absorption of Paul in
his immediate purpose ; and Paul, who ever loved the personal services of
younger companions, must have been a little embittered, as daily worries,
became more trying in the absence of a vigorous comrade. There must have
been in his heart a feeling of indignation against one who forsook them at
the very moment when ho could least bo replaced, and when the difficulties
which he could so greatly have lightened began to assume their most formid-
able shape.
So Mark left them, and the Apostles at once made their way towards the
interior. Although we are not told of any synagogue at Perga, yet, since
they preached there on their return journey, there must have been some
special reason for their now leaving the place. This reason has been found in
the probability that they reached the town towards the middle of 8
spring,
when the entire population of the cities on the plain and sea-coast are in the
habit of moving inland to the yailahs, or, as they would be called in Switzer-
land, " aZps," or mountain pastures, which enable them to escape the fierce
3
and malarious heat of the lower regions. It would be useless to preach in
Perga at the very time that its main population were deserting it ; and any of
the numerous caravans or family-migrations, which wore filling the roads and
passes with mules and camels and herds of cattle, would furnish the Apostles
with company and protection. Without such escort it would have boon im-
prudent, if not impossible, for them to make their way by those dangerous
roads where it is probable that the snow-drifts still lay in many places, and
they might often find the bridges shattered and swept away by tho sudden
spates of rushing streams.
The few modern travellers who have visited these parts of Asia Minor
1
Strabo, xii. 6, 7. See Lewin, 1. 130, sqq.
2 Con. and Howson, i. 177, who quote Spratt and Forbes, Travels in Lycia, i. 43, 242,
213 ; Fellowes, Lycia, 238.
* A striking description of snch a migration among the Kirghiz Tartars may be found
In Mr. Atkinson's Travels.